Yahoo today announced an expansion of its long standing partnership with Merkle, the leading technology-enabled, data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company, connecting Merkle’s identity resolution and data platform, Merkury, and Yahoo ConnectID. 

Yahoo ConnectID supports advertisers and publishers as the digital landscape evolves away from third-party cookies, giving them a way to manage, reach and monetize online audiences while also safeguarding consumer privacy. Yahoo’s large interoperability ecosystem scales that reach and monetization while also providing independent measurement. Yahoo ConnectID has been integrated by over 3,000 publisher domains, including Cafe Media, Maven and Newsweek, among many more. Over 200 advertisers and agencies are directly activating their first-party data through the identifier. Yahoo ConnectID is integrated within the Yahoo DSP and available and leveraged by all advertisers within the platform.

Merkle’s Merkury identity resolution platform enables marketers, media owners, and publishers to own, build and control a cookieless person identity graph. Merkury uses an organization’s permission-based first-party CRM data and interactions such as logins, outbound email campaigns and media reach to create and grow a universe of person-based IDs for cross-channel targeting, personalization, measurement and more.

This collaboration enables Merkury customers who build custom audiences using Merkury IDs to activate them within Yahoo's DSP through Yahoo ConnectID. Yahoo is able to onboard segments tied to Merkury IDs for targeting and for passback exposure data, strengthening performance insights. Pairing Merkury's cookie-less, person ID graph with the people-based Yahoo ConnectID, which relies on Yahoo’s own ID graph, increases reach and performance, and elevates consumer experiences on all channels. Yahoo today reaches 148 million deterministic logged in users across over 240 million unique profiles and 400 million unique devices, fueled by both direct consumer relationships and partnerships.

“The digital landscape continues to move away from cookies - even with Chrome’s delay - and it's more important than ever for the industry to rally around sustainable, people-first identity solutions,” said Iván Markman, Chief Business Officer, Yahoo. “Merkle and Yahoo have a shared commitment to helping advertisers and publishers drive revenue and meaningful connections, while supporting consumer trust.”

“Merkury's advanced identity resolution capabilities empower marketers to deliver valuable, personalized, cross-channel experiences that drive engagement and action, all in a privacy-safe manner,” said Gerry Bavaro, Chief Strategy Officer, Merkury. “By expanding our longstanding relationship with Yahoo, we enhance our targeting solutions while amplifying measurability for our clients.”  

Yahoo and Merkle became partners in 2017, integrating Merkle’s people-based insights, planning, activation, and measurement platform, M1™, within Yahoo’s ad platforms.